Couple of things before this gets started.

First, I Don't Own Hunger Games (the movie or books). I don't own Katniss, Peeta, or anything else connect to the this series.

Secondly, this is my first time (ever) writing 1st person present tense. Forgive me for the traveling back and forth between present and past tense. It will get better. Just use your imagination and pretend those mistakes aren't there. Thanks

Last, This story has mature content throughout. Not in this starting chapter, but in most every chapter following. If you do not like it, you do not have to read it. I hope you enjoy my imaginings, Thanks!

Growing Back Together

Ch. 1

Fire & Reason

Searching… I was searching…

I am back at the hospital in District Eight. Looking around, all I can see are the rebels who are wounded. Upon closer inspection, the wounded bare the faces of all those I knew that had died because of me. Whispers of my name ripple in awe through the room.
"The mockingjay… Katniss Everdeen… mockingjay…"

I want to tell them that I am no longer their mockingjay. I am just a girl who was claimed to have lost her mind. An assassin who can't distinguish an enemy from an ally. I open my mouth to speak but the words are lost beneath the chanting of my name. I want to yell for them to stop but my body isn't reacting to my every command. I simply lift my head and continue to search. Bed after bed, wounded after wounded, I search.

What am I looking for? I glance down to find myself in a bright red hospital gown. A bracelet from the wards of District 13 shining brightly on my wrist.

"Mockingjay… girl on Fire… Katniss…. the girl… Fire" the chanting in the changes. Every eye is on me, every voice beginning to fill with hatred. I keep walking through the mass, avoiding and ignoring hands that are reaching for me. I have to find what I am looking for, that is all that matters.

"Fire… Fire… Fire…"

"Katniss…" A voice calls to me. I can hear it as clearly as if the room had been silent and empty. Looking down in front of me was my mother.

"Katniss…" She whispers again. Her voice as faint and see through as fine lace. Resting on a stretcher, pock marks cover every visible area of her skin. Perspiration dampens her forehead, her eyes dark with unrest. The blanket covering her lower body is smeared in blood. She holds her hands up to me, her fingers stiff and bent with strain, making them seem more like talons.

"Girl on Fire… Fire…. on Fire… on Fire… on Fire…"

"Katniss…" I hear a gurgling in her throat as a drop of blood splashes on her lip.

"Mom" I sob.

"Katniss… get out."

My ears pick up a new noise. One from outside. The hum of the fighter planes coming to destroy the hospital.

"Mom, I can't,"

"Set her on Fire! Set the girl on Fire! Set her on Fire! FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!" The voices were maddening.

"GET OUT."

Everything around me explodes and I am on Fire…

"MOM!"

I sit straight up in my bed, my body tense with adrenaline. Where was she? I throw the covers off and race down the hall. Flinging open the door to what had been my mother's bedroom I see that her bed is neatly made. A layer of dust is settled over the furnishings. She isn't here. My heart pounds as I rush down the stairs, calling for her. Silence answers. The house is empty. Running out into the snow and down the street all I can think of is to get to his house. I pound my fists on the door.

"PEETA!"

I don't stop my assault on the door to wait for a verbal reply. I keep pounding and screaming his name until the door finally opens in a rush. I grab Peeta's hand as I rush to explain, fumbling over the words.

"My Mom! My Mom, she is in trouble! We have to get her out!"

He has to concentrate to understand me, "What? Katniss, calm down."

"No! She is sick! And all those other people!" I tug on his hand, urging him into following me.

"Katniss. Stop."

"Help me!"

"KATNISS!"

I blink at his raised voice and slowly close my opposing mouth… He looks into my eyes and I realize…

"It was just a dream…" I whisper.

A worried look coveres his handsome features. He is having the same thought that is forcing its way into my head. I'm no stranger to nightmares, but when I wake they are usually over and I am free to shake and recover. Reason hadn't come upon waking this time. Reason had not come to me until after I had ran all the way to his house. It was the makings of a crazy person.

While this honestly shouldn't bother me (I have been proclaimed crazy, by others and myself, more times than I can count) I feel completely terrified. What kind of life do I have where I can't distinguish my dreams from reality? What future could I have when even my mind insisted on torturing me even now that the war is over?
I stood before Peeta, in my night gown and shoeless in the snow. He was the strongest comfort I knew. Tortured and broken by the capital, unable to distinguish much reality himself. I begin to shiver not entirely from the cold.

Peeta now pulls my hand. I follow him inside. I start to feel the sting of the snow on my feet. He begins to comfort me in the voice he always uses to calm me. He pulls me through the kitchen (I always use this way into his house, seeing as this is where he could be found most of the time) and into his living room, where a fire is blazing. I flinch in spite of myself. Girl on Fire. He notices my hesitation, squeezes my hand, and leads me to the couch. Our hands lose contact so he can gather up the blanket that is spread out. He had been sleeping there before I came.

"I'm sorry." My voice cracks as I speak. I hate to think that I interrupted what had been peaceful sleeping. He was plagued by nightmares as much as I was and a dreamless sleep was a precious gift.

"It's fine Katniss. I understand."

He sits me down on and gently places the blanket around my shoulders. It smells like him. I grab the ends and pull it tight around me. He quickly produces another blanket from a closet and wraps it around my feet.

"Better?"

No, not better. I am freezing, afraid of fire, in my night cloths, my feet hurt, my mom might be dieing… but I nod that I am better.

"Do you want to tell me about it?"

The sincerity in his voice is palpable. Peeta is always so emotionally involved with everything he does. He rarely holds back and never conceals anything, not from me... at least that is how it use to be…
I shake my head. I am beginning to have trouble recalling the details of my dream that were different than the actual happenings. I need to compose myself before I speak to him.

"Would you be ok long enough for me to make some hot chocolate?"

He was giving me time. He always knows what I need. I nod, not trusting my voice at the moment. He gives my hand another squeeze and leaves the room. I look at my hand, at the last contact we had. I noted some time ago that the only place on my body Peeta is willing to touch since we returned to District 12 is my hands. Except about a month ago he had gotten my attention by tapping my shoulder to point out where his new bakery was being built. Pathetic that I would even register that. But other than that, no physical contact. He still has his moments of forgetting himself. He will revert back into the capital's mutt as a result of the torture he had to endure. I can still recall the feeling of his hands around my neck when he was first rescued. Nothing that serious has happened since the overrun of the capital. Just harsh words and harsher glares. He has been able contain the physical side of it.

It has been around two years since I shot Coin. Roughly 18 months since I returned to Twelve. Since then my life has been about nothing but hunting and the book. The book of memories that keeps me tied to the hope of living. Every good memory of someone from the past keeps me struggling through one day at a time. Since losing Prim… No… I can't think of Prim now. It is still too hard.

The book. Yes, the book. I still can't write about my family or those who mattered most to me. Small steps my therapist says. Besides giving me something to hang onto, making the book lets me see Peeta on an every-other-day basis. I don't even see much of Haymitch anymore. Peeta says it is because he just wants to forget everything that has happened and that he'll come around in time. I think it is more than that. I think he blames me. He can't really ever leave 12 "until further notice", which I deem to be until everyone thinks I'm sane again. Fat chance. He made some deal (probably a never-ended supply of liquor) to be the one to watch over me since my mother wouldn't come back. I didn't ask him to do it. He probably thinks he would be better off in another district. Yeah, he probably would be.

I forced Haymitch out of my mind. I was dealing with enough guilt and self pity at the moment. I hear the rattling of cups, signaling that Peeta would soon be coming back. He often leaves discussing my dreams up to me. Of course he usually asks after he visits me during the day, not right after I wake and then practically break down his door. I usually shrug my nightmares off with morbid satire. But this one is different…

He comes back into the room carrying two steaming mugs. I try to give him a faint smile. "Thanks."

He sits on the floor in front of me, watching as I sip. I welcomed the warm liquid. Peeta perfected the recipe since we had it on the train, back during The Games. We sit in silence until most of our drinks are gone. I stare at the flames.

"Were you on fire again?" Peeta asks quietly, noticing my uneasy obsession.

"It was about the hospital in Eight."

"Oh…" Is all he says. He had not been there with me. At that time he was still being tortured… oh no.

I watch him carefully, expecting to see his eyes dilate as they always do when it hits him. When he was tortured they used that video, among many others, to convince him that I was the treacherous mutt. He looks back at me with normal blue eyes.

He smirks after reading the look on my face, "Don't worry. I'm not going to go off on you. It isn't that bad anymore Katniss. I rarely have bad episodes anymore."

I give him a sincere smile. It fades quickly as I continue with my narration. "Not much of the dream mattered. People that I knew that had died were wounded people in the hospital. They were happy to see me at first, then called for me to be set on fire." I shrug and turn the last of my drink into my mouth before continuing, "But my mom was there… she was hurt, and covered in marks like she had a sickness. She was reaching for me but told me to get out. Then fighter planes came and bombed us."

Peeta exhibits nothing but calm. Like I said, we were use to the nightmares.

"You miss your mom, Katniss. You know she is working as a healer, so you associated it with the worst part of being a healer, getting sick themselves. Everything else was awful, but normal. Well, normal for us."

I hate to admit it but he is right. I sigh and stare into my empty cup. Everything else I have dreamed before, over and over, even the hospital in eight. But never of my mother. Never of Prim.

"In the morning we'll call your mom to check on her. Why don't you stay here tonight?" My head snaps up. We haven't spent the night together since the Quarter Quell… well except for in the capital raid, if you could count that he was handcuffed to a rail most of the time.

"I'll get everything ready."

I watch him go, unable to believe what he just said. Our romantic relationship is basically considered nonexistent since we came back. We are friends, but even normal friends have more physical contact than we do. I'm always careful not to push him.
I start to get nervous and notice my hands are shaking as I set my empty cup on the table. He returns, and taking my hand in his he pulls me up from the couch. I keep his hand as he leads up the stairs and down the hall. The temperature is bitter in the house, but the fire keeps it inhabitable. A bed will be cozy, someone in the bed with me will be more than warm enough. My knees feel weak but my excitement keeps my bare feet moving. Before we get to Peeta's room, he stops to usher me into a guest bedroom. My stomach does a weird flop. I look back at him, my surprise evident.

His hand runs through his hair and he mumbles uncomfortably. "There is an extra blanket on the end of the bed."

I purse my lips. It wasn't what I had been hoping for in the least. Maybe just being in the same house with him will give me comfort enough to keep the nightmares at bay.
Peeta moves around me to the bed, pulls the covers back and steps aside. I walk stiffly over and climb in. Tucking me in like he would a child, he also pulls the extra blanket over me without a request. He sits beside me on the bed and we stare at each other. Minutes stretch and neither of us budge. I wish I was as good as he was when it came to knowing what was on other people's minds. The air in the room was cold, and I could see goosebumps on his arms. Maybe he is waiting for me to fall asleep… not likely to happen unless I could convince him to climb in with me.

"Remember what you would tell me whenever I asked you not leave me?" I whisper, breaking the trance. It wasn't a solid invitation, but it was clear what I was wanting. He continues to watch me, his features unreadable. Finally he reaches out and gently strokes my check.

"Always… I'll be down the hall if you need me," I watch him leave without looking back.

I huff in frustration. Why did things never work out the way I want them to?